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Published: July 24th 2010
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Our original plan after Beijing had been to get an overnight sleeper train to Xi’an (pronounced She-an) where we would see the Terracotta Warriors and then another overnight sleeper train to Guilin where we would spend a few days seeing the scenic rivers and mountains. All seemed quite simple until we discovered the weird and wonderful world of Chinese train booking procedures….
The problem we encountered is that you can only buy a train ticket from the station the train is actually departing from. This means you can’t buy your departing train ticket from somewhere until you’ve actually arrived there. Still not the worst thing in the world but then factor in the high demand for train travel in China and you’ll find that the trains got booked up well in advance of the date we actually arrived anywhere.
For our first overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an the preferred “soft sleeper” cabins had all been sold out. Not only that but “hard sleeper” were also sold out. All we could get were normal seats. Needless to say you don’t get much sleep just in a seat especially with a particularly annoying Chinese boy behind us who insisted on
singing and talking to himself for most the journey. Lets just say our last muffins very nearly became projectile muffins!
Xi’an is a large and quite industrial city of about 5 million people. The main tourist attraction, and only thing we did in Xi’an, is the Terracotta Warriors which are actually located about 30 miles outside of the city centre. I’m sure there are plenty of other nice things to do in Xi’an but I got the impression it needed a bit of digging below the surface to find them. The main pit of warriors is nearly 200 meters long and 50 meters wide. They were only discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a water well. The whole site hasn’t been excavated yet but they estimate there to be nearly 6000 warriors in the pit, all with different faces! Tombs of various emperors are nearby and the purpose of the warriors was to assist and protect these emperors into their afterlife. It was all pretty impressive stuff. Keen blog readers will also remember reading our story of the Little Mermaid statue being taken away from Copenhagen for display at the world expo in Shanghai. A similar thing happened
here and we laughed as we realized that a very famous bronze chariot we wanted to see had also been taken away to Shanghai!
The next leg of our trip proved even more difficult to book. After asking around at several travel agencies it became clear that all the trains to Guilin were completely booked up for several days ahead. Not even the seats were available! This left us with a dilemma, we could wait in Xi’an for several days or we get an internal flight the next day to Guilin. The flight wasn’t much more expensive than the sleeper train we’d originally planned for and since the Manchester to Sydney over land had already been undone by the cancellation of our container ship it seemed a bit of a no brainer.
Guilin is in the far south of China and the surrounding countryside is stunning, I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking. On the first day we did a cruise on the Li River down to a town called Yangshuo and then on the second day we did a tour to the Longsheng Rice Terraces. These rice terraces are in the nearby mountains at an
altitude of about 800 meters. This stat is significant as it led us up and then more importantly back down again what I can only describe as ‘death road’. Think hairpins, think steep gradients, think shear drops, think bus drivers who aspire to be in Formula 1, think of my white knuckles!!!! The bus journey up wasn’t too bad, but back down again was ridiculously fast. As you can probably deduce we did actually survive. Just.
The town of Guilin is popular place for the Chinese to holiday and as such has a good vibe about it. Even though we’d just caught the edge of a typhoon and as such had some pretty torrential rain to contend with, the streets were still busy each evening with people eating, drinking and having a good time. During one of our evening meals we were seated next to a Chinese family who started speaking to us. The husband wanted advice on what type of coffee to order as he’d never tried coffee before! They came from the far west of China near Tibet and said they only ever drank tea there. He had brought his family on holiday to Guilin so his
daughter could practice her English with the tourists and they could all experience some western style foods etc. He went for an Americano with milk and sugar and seemed to like it! On another evening we also came across an outdoor public aerobics class which we later learned are quite common in China. Basically an instructor will stand in a street or park with a portable stereo and anybody that wants to join in can do. Unfortunately we had the wrong type of shoes…
Our time has now come to leave China and I’m writing this blog whilst on a coach to Hanoi in Vietnam. We didn’t even try booking a train out of Guilin and instead went straight for a good deal on a coach/hotel/coach combination. So yesterday we got a coach from Guilin to a town near the Chinese/Vietnamese border called Nanning. During that bus trip we passed a sign telling us that we’d just crossed the Tropic of Cancer so we’re now officially in the tropics! We stayed at a hotel in Nanning for the night and then today we got the onwards coach to Hanoi.
Neither Liz nor I had ever heard of Nanning
but when we arrived last night we quickly discovered it was a huge metropolis. There were miles and miles of high rise buildings and the city was probably not far off the size of London. Crazy! So we’d learnt that Nanning was big but then also learnt it was somewhat off the tourist trail. As we went for dinner at the restaurant in the hotel we were treated like celebrities by the staff. They seemed very surprised to have two foreigners (and blonds at that) down for dinner and for the first 10 minutes we were waited on by no less than about 5 waitresses. Even the manager came over to say hello! In the end we went for a big plate of stir fried green beans (very tasty) and an equally big plate of stir fried courgettes (also very tasty).
One of the things we’ve really loved about China has been the food. After the often fried and greasy food of Russia and Mongolia it was so nice to arrive into China and discover all these different dishes of noodles, vegetables, beef, chicken, tofu etc. Nearly all of the dishes we’ve tried have tasted great and for about
5 pounds each we always had more food than we could possibly eat! Whilst Liz was already a master chopstick user it was the first time for me. I’ve tried a few times before but always gave up after a few mouthfuls (actually mouth-empties would be more accurate). This time there was no giving up and whilst the first few meals were a challenge I think I’ve mastered it now, or at least the staff (and Liz) don’t laugh at me anymore!
I’ll end this blog by briefly mentioning some of the funny signs we’ve seen during our time in China. My favorites include the one telling me to be “good tourist” and also the one on the Great Wall telling me to “commit no nuisance”. I’ve attached some pictures at the end so have a look they’re quite funny.
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David Masson
non-member comment
Wow
Hi Liz, Luke, looks like you are having the time of your life. Just been catching up with your blog from Manchester to China. Great that you can share this adventure with us. Your blog is fab.